Chapter 5
The next morning,
Louise arrived early at her store. As soon as she stepped through the doorway,
she sensed that something was wrong: the air was frigid and the lights wouldn’t
turn on. From the corner of her eye she noticed a shadow pass by her. She was
terrified that the creeping shadows were now stalking her inside and in the
daylight.
She grabbed the door handle but found that it wouldn’t budge in
either direction. She stared through the door’s plate glass window and began to
realize that the town was deserted. All the other stores along Main Street were
still closed, except for the sheriff’s office, which was too far away to be of
any help. She was all alone with no one around to save her. If she cried out
for help, no one could
possibly hear her.
She felt panic beginning to overwhelm her. She couldn’t breathe; it
felt like all the oxygen in the room had been sucked out. She began gasping for
breaths of air, but there didn’t seem to be any left in the locked store. She
scanned the store for something to help her break the front window but only
found the display of mannequins. She rushed over to one of the mannequins and threw
it head first through the window. Sharp shards of glass sprayed across the
outside pavement and fresh air flowed into the store. She gulped in huge breaths of air and climbed through the broken
glass. She threw glances up and down the streets, but couldn’t detect any signs
of movement.
She ran all the way home without informing the sheriff’s office about
the intruder in her store. She decided not to tell anyone what had really
happened—not even the sheriff—since she didn’t know who to believe in anymore. She didn’t believe that the sheriff had ever investigated any of the strange sightings or unsolved disappearances.
From that moment on, Louise decided not to trust anyone or to confide her fears to anyone in town ever again. She would become an island to herself: strong and self-sufficient. She
didn’t even trust Todd any longer: he was too chummy with the sheriff and the
original residents. She suspected that these residents were the ones
responsible for the unknown creatures stalking her and all the other
unexplained incidents in town.
When the call finally came from the sheriff’s office later that day to inform her of the break-in at her store, she managed to
sound surprised and concerned. She even returned to the store with the sheriff
to check out the extent of the damage, informing him that nothing had been
stolen. She then arranged to have Tom and Edward fix the window. No one had commented
on the fact that the store mannequin and the broken glass had been on the
outside of the store. And this didn’t surprise her at all.
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